Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Dissertations, No. 1500 Analysis of Dynamics of the Tippe Top Nils Rutstam Department of Mathematics Linköping University, SE–581 83 Linköping, Sweden Linköping 2013 Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Dissertations, No. 1500 Analysis of Dynamics of the Tippe Top Nils Rutstam
[email protected] www.mai.liu.se Division of Applied Mathematics Department of Mathematics Linköping University SE–581 83 Linköping Sweden ISBN 978-91-7519-692-3 ISSN 0345-7524 Copyright © 2013 Nils Rutstam Printed by LiU-Tryck, Linköping, Sweden 2013 iii They have proven quite effectively that bumblebees indeed can fly against the field’s authority. -Einstürzende Neubauten Abstract The Tippe Top is a toy that has the form of a truncated sphere with a small peg. When spun on its spherical part on a flat supporting surface it will start to turn upside down to spin on its peg. This counterintuitive phenomenon, called in- version, has been studied for some time, but obtaining a complete description of the dynamics of inversion has proven to be a difficult problem. This is because even the most simplified model for the rolling and gliding Tippe Top is a non- integrable, nonlinear dynamical system with at least 6 degrees of freedom. The existing results are based on numerical simulations of the equations of motion or an asymptotic analysis showing that the inverted position is the only asymptot- ically attractive and stable position for the Tippe Top under certain conditions. The question of describing dynamics of inverting solutions remained rather in- tact. In this thesis we develop methods for analysing equations of motion of the Tippe Top and present conditions for oscillatory behaviour of inverting solu- tions.